And if you know how to use a saw and a hammer, you can build what Ethan is selling for less than 1/3 the price!
Your tracking room will need a balance of low mid absorption and high frequency diffusion. There are very cost effective approaches to both IF you are willing to swing a hammer and cut with a saw, and do a little glue work.
Your control room is going to need some well placed absorption, possibly full spectrum. Here, you will be looking to get rid of early reflections at your mix position, and to again tame low mids in the room.
If you think all of this is just as simple as buying a product to throw on the walls and call it done, you are sadly mistaken.
First off, forget the Aurlex stuff. That is over priced garbage. At best, you might get some okay high frequency difussion out of their product line, but aside from that, they really don't make anything that is terribly effective that is cost effective too. Forget the cool looking ad's here.
Next, it is VERY easy to create new acoustic problems by "over solving" another. Meaning, you "think" you need high freqency absorption, so you put up a bunch of absoption for it, now you have a frequency RT balance problem, because what you really needed was to get rid of early midrange reflections at your mix position. Don't know what I mean? Probably not, and that is why you are thinking egg crate and foam products will solve your problems.
Your best bet is to head on down to the Studio Design forum here, and start a thread and give as many details about your room sizes and materials already in the room as you possibly can. Then ask John Sayers very nicely if he would give a tad of advice.
With all the money that John Sayers could save you from paying for that overpriced Aurlex crap, you could actually afford to have him design treatments specifically for your room! In the end, you will wind up with MUCH better sounding rooms this way.
I can tell for some reason that you will be thinking "this guy is whacky!!! Aurlex makes all these wonderful claims and has all these endorsements, and all claim it is the best". To that, I will tell you that I have worked out of many nice studios, and none of them used ANY Aurlex products at all. It is only when I get to the small house studios that I start seeing Aurlex, and time and time again, Aurlex didn't solve any of the importand problems in those rooms! These rooms are usually impossible to do effective work in because the major acoustical problems were not addressed effectively by Aurlex products!
Do yourself a favor and forget Aurlex products. Forget about egg crates. Forget about foam in general.
Spend a few extra bucks and do stuff right. That would start with having a comprehensive assessment done of your room and then specific treatments applied to the problems, all done by somebody that designs acoustical treatments for a living.
Yes, you can spend a lot of time trying to figure it out yourself. Possibly, being the first time you do this, you might actually get lucky and get even 50% of your problems solved. But you know, I have been doing engineering work for over a decade and I STILL consult acoustic designers. Blue Bear Sound just built his studio from plans John Sayers sent him (that Bruce paid for!). Bruce is very happy with his rooms. I have been happy with all the jobs John has helped me out with too. So, you have two guys that know more than you do about this who STILL refuse to risk figuring this stuff out for ourselves and will gladly pay a guy who knows his beans to do it.
Good luck.
Ed
Far superior to that Auralex crap, and probably a lot cheaper, too.
